Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Falsehood

Dissimulation is but a faint kind of policy, or wisdom; for it asketh a strong wit and a strong heart to know when to tell truth, and to do it: therefore it is the weaker sort of politicians that are the greatest dissemblers.

Round dealing is the honour of man’s nature; and a mixture of falsehood is like alloy in gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it.

The first great requisite is absolute sincerity. Falsehood and disguise are miseries and misery-makers, under whatever strength of sympathy, or desire to prolong happy thoughts in others for their sake or your own only as sympathizing with theirs, it may originate. All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.

Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth; and no opinions so fatally mislead us as those that are not wholly wrong, as no watches so effectually deceive the wearers as those that are sometimes right.

He would never allow himself to employ those exaggerations and colours in the narration of facts which many who would shudder at a deliberate falsehood freely indulge; some for the gratification of their passions or the advancement of their interests, and others purely from the impulse of vanity and a wish to render their narratives more striking and their conversation more poignant.

False men are not to be taken into confidence, nor fearful men into a post that requires resolution.

If an ingenuous detestation of falsehood be but carefully and early instilled, that is the true and genuine method to obviate dishonesty.

Where fraud and falsehood invade society the band presently breaks, and men are put to a loss where to league and to fasten their dependances.

Every breach of veracity indicates some latent vice, or some criminal intention, which the individual is ashamed to avow.

Whatsoever convenience may be thought to be in falsehood and dissimulation, it is soon over; but the inconvenience of it is perpetual, because it brings a man under an everlasting jealousy and suspicion, so that he is not believed when he speaks truth, nor trusted when perhaps he means honestly. When a man has once forfeited the reputation of his integrity, he is set fast, and nothing will then serve his turn, neither truth nor falsehood.